A report in the December 14, 2005 Daily Telegraph said that “A woman who had been given up for dead, after the earthquake which occurred in Pakistan on October 8, was reported to have been discovered alive in the rubble of her home, no fewer than 63 days after the disaster struck. Relatives said that they weren’t even looking for her, but had found Naqsha Bibi, 40, in the ruins of what had been her kitchen as they sifted through the debris to salvage roofing materials. She had apparently survived on rainwater and rotting food. The doctors said that after being put on a liquid diet she had begun to show signs of recovery and had smiled for the first time since her rescue.” Now that is amazing!
Teresa May de Vera writes, “I was 19 when I suffered a severe asthma attack, and entered the hospital "clinically dead". I was without oxygen for 7 minutes and lapsed into a coma for 3 months. Doctors were urging my parents to pull the plug and find some redemption by harvesting my organs. I woke up and the doctors can only call my awakening a 'miracle.' They also said if I ever woke up, I'd be in a persistent vegetative state forever. I returned to the university and graduated in 2004 with a degree in Political Science. That is also amazing.
A man was severely beaten and soon after the beating died. He was pronounced dead by the medical examiner and was buried. Three days later the place in which he had been buried was found empty and a whole bunch of people saw him alive.
These stories are amazing, but it is the last one that is the most amazing. Of course the last one is about Jesus. It is amazing because Jesus was fully dead and came to life again. It is not only amazing, but also significant because it was God himself who died on the cross and did so in order to pay for our sins. And it was not merely being found alive or being dead for a short time, but a resurrection to life in which he not only came through death to life, but conquered death once and for all. The implications of the story of Jesus’ resurrection are life changing!
This morning, I would like to invite you to examine John 20,21 with me as we look at five sayings and actions of Jesus following his resurrection which help us to understand the tremendous implications of the resurrection.
Mary – A New Relationship With God
The first person to see Jesus alive was Mary Magdalene. In John 20:17, after Mary had realized that it was Jesus who was now alive and speaking with her, Jesus said to her, “I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”
What is the difference between leaving and returning? Earlier in John, Jesus had talked about leaving and his disciples were very sad. Leaving means that you have been in the place you want to be and you are going away from that place. At this point, Jesus told Mary that he was returning. Returning means that you are also leaving, but you are leaving to go back to the place where you used to be.
What are the implications of that? Jesus was returning to heaven to be with His Father. Returning reminds us that he had come to this earth on a mission. He had been sent to earth. Having taught for three years and having gone through the agony of the cross, he had accomplished the mission he had come for. He had purchased the pardon for all those who put faith in Him. His work on the cross was “finished.” Because it was completed, it was now appropriate for him to return to the Father. In returning, and doing so victoriously, he was going to sit on a throne and reign as king over all. He was going to intercede for God’s people. He was going to prepare a place for them.
So for Jesus to tell Mary that He was returning to His Father was significant and encompasses the importance of all that He had accomplished in coming to this earth.
Leaving is sad, returning can also be sad, but not in this case because of the upshot of the resurrection!
He had come from God, He was returning to God. But notice the wonderful way in which he makes this statement to Mary. He says, “I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” In this statement, we see one of the wonderful implications of the resurrection. When he says, “my Father, your Father, my God, your God,” he is saying that because he has died and risen again, our relationship with God has been restored once again.
In the garden of Eden, after Adam and Eve had sinned, the first consequence of that sin was that they were separated from God. The barrier of un-holiness had caused a huge chasm between people and God. But now, because of the resurrection, that chasm is overcome, the barrier has been removed and it is possible to once again have a clear and open relationship with God. That is what it means when he says, “my Father and your Father.”
The other thing that happened when Adam and Eve had sinned in the garden was that they were removed from the garden and from access to the tree of life so that they would not live forever in their sin. Now that Jesus had died to cover sins and conquered death by His resurrection, we have, in essence been placed back in the garden and once again we have access to the tree of life so that we will be able to have eternal life. That is also what it means when Jesus said to her, “my God and your God.”
So the upshot of the resurrection is a restored, eternal relationship with God.
Disciples – A New Empowered Mandate
The first time the disciples met Jesus was that same evening when they were in a room together. When Jesus came through the locked doors and showed himself to the disciples alive, he said to them in John 20:21-23 - “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” 22 And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”
The second implication of the resurrection is that there is a continuity between Jesus mission and our reason for living. As this verse indicates, the mission of the disciples and of us proceeds from the mission of Jesus.
Our niece phoned me this week. She is going to China for the month of May to be involved in a mission in which they will learn the culture of China and seek to be a witness to those they meet. This is a missions project of IVCF. A number of you have gone on missions projects. That is wonderful and I certainly want to encourage many of you to be involved in this way. However, there is one problem with that way of talking. When we talk about going on missions, we sometimes make it appear that then we are doing God’s work, but the rest of the time we are on our own. What Jesus said to the disciples here is that we are always on mission. We are sent people and whether we are welding, teaching, baking bread or out on a missions trip, we are sent ones, we are on mission.
For Jesus to go on His mission meant that he was willing to leave his comfort zone – heaven – in order to accomplish it. To be sent as Jesus was sent means that some of us will leave home and go far away to make Jesus known. For most of us we will stay home, but that does not mean we should avoid leaving our comfort zone. Leaving our comfort zone may mean stepping out and speaking up, or deliberately doing something in Winnipeg or Morris that will contribute to the mission.
It will mean being willing to make friends with people who are not believers because Jesus mission involved incarnation, that is, becoming one of us in order to accomplish His mission as a human being. Being on mission means that we must love Jesus and live in the presence of those who don’t so that we can show them the love of Christ.
The mission Jesus came to accomplish also involved a message from God. Being sent as Jesus was sent means that our mission involves proclaiming the message of life which Jesus came to bring. The implication of the resurrection is that as Jesus was sent, so we also have been sent.
But the implication of the resurrection also means that we do not go in our own power. The upshot of the victory of the resurrection which Jesus accomplished means that we are on mission in the power of the resurrection, that is in the power of the Holy Spirit.
As Jesus commissioned his disciples, he said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” The Holy Spirit is God with us because Jesus left to go to heaven. I am reading the book “Magnify your vision for The Small Church” by John Rowell. It is a story about a church from Atlanta which is involved in planting a church in Bosnia. They were doing ministry in a refugee camp during the war that was there in the early 90’s. Part of their ministry was to visit the, mainly Muslim, residents of the camp. They were looking for a particular address and couldn’t find it so they stopped at a house in the neighborhood. The woman who came to the door said in her Bosnian dialect, “God, I don’t know.” The translator understood in his Slovenian dialect, “I don’t know God.” So based on this misunderstanding they took the opportunity to visit this woman and over time and further visits, this Muslim woman accepted Jesus. That is the work of the Holy Spirit and it is in that power, which is resurrection power, that we witness for Jesus as we accept that we have been sent to be on mission.
The third time that Jesus appeared to someone occurred about a week later.
One mistake we make is to think that, after the resurrection, Jesus appeared to them and they immediately believed and got it. Coming to belief in Jesus was a process. When Mary first realized that the tomb was empty, she didn’t get it at all. She said to Simon and John in 20:2, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him.” When Peter and John went and examined this, both of them saw the facts, but John is the only one about whom it says in 20:8, “He saw and believed.” But the others did not yet believe and they did not yet understand. In 20:9 it says, “They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.”
The first time Jesus appeared to the disciples, Thomas had not been with them. When they had told him what had happened, he had said in 20:25, “Unless I see…I will not believe it.” So when Jesus appeared to the disciples again, he spoke directly to Thomas and invited him to take note that it was really him. It was at this point that he said to Thomas, in John 20:29, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
The consequence of the resurrection is that it is a call to faith, but it is not a call to blind faith. Just as it took the disciples a while to get it, God gives us time and space to explore this truth. The conversation which Jesus had with Thomas was not in a condemning tone. There is a place for asking questions, facing doubts, but there is also an invitation to faith. There is a place for examining the evidence, but finally we are invited to face the facts of the empty tomb and the appearances and believe. The evidence calls us to faith. The witness of those who saw Him calls us to faith. In fact the conversation of Thomas with Jesus is an encouragement to faith. The fact that a doubter is convinced affirms the resurrection and encourages us to believe. We will not be able to see because Jesus has ascended to the Father, but we have the witness of those who did see and are invited to believe without seeing on the basis of the available evidence. Leon Morris, in his commentary says, “There is a special blessing for those possessed of a faith which can trust absolutely, and which does not need to ‘see’ at every turn.”
Indeed, all that John has written is written for this purpose as we see in verses 30,31 which says, “But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
The fourth recorded appearance of Jesus and the third to the disciples happened some time later in Galilee. Some of the disciples had gone to Galilee and had returned to fishing. All night they had spread their nets, but caught nothing. In the morning, they saw someone on shore, not realizing that it was Jesus. He told them to put their nets on the other side and immediately, as they did so, they caught a large number of fish. Now those of you who go fishing know that sometimes it is just like that. I remember one time when the guy who was on the bow of the boat caught one fish after another and the people on the sides and the back caught nothing. But this was different. The number of fish caught and the immediate catch all suggest that this was more than just fishing luck, it was a miracle of God.
There are more unusual comments in this story. As the fishermen brought the net to shore, they found on shore a fire going with bread and fish already on it. They had caught the fish, but Jesus already had fish and bread. As they hauled the net out of the water and began to count and clean the fish, the text says that the net did not break in spite of the large number of fish. We read in John 21:11, Simon Peter climbed aboard and dragged the net ashore. It was full of large fish, 153, but even with so many the net was not torn.”
Besides being another encounter with Jesus, there is more going on here that tells us about the repercussions of the resurrection. In this story, Jesus does not speak much, but his actions communicate very loudly. He already had bread and fish on the fire and did not need their fish, and yet he invited them to bring the fish they had caught and add them to what he already had cooking. Because of the resurrection, we bring what we have to offer and Jesus multiplies its effects because of His power.
The comment that the net did not break is also interesting. It says something about His resurrection power and how God will work in and through us. If we would apply this to the mission He has given us, it means that the capacity to grow His kingdom is not limited by our feeble resources. The net will not break as we grow His church. Strachan writes, “the church’s resources, with Christ in its midst, are never overstrained.” Resurrection power adds the miracles and power of Jesus to all that we do in His name. It encourages us to offer what we have to Him and understand that much more will happen than we are able to do because of Jesus and His resurrection power.
The book I mentioned earlier, “Magnify your vision for The Small Church,” is a story about a church in Atlanta which was prompted by God to plant a church in Bosnia. The pastor of the church and another church member went to Bosnia to examine the possibilities. On their way back they had to take different flights and this pastor, tired from the experience, was looking forward to a time of rest and being alone. But in the overcrowded bus on the way to the airport he met some people who knew him and had attended his church in Atlanta. They began to talk and he told them the story of how they were beginning work on planting a church in Bosnia. Their church was small and their resources for this project were clearly inadequate. A man on the bus overheard the story and when they arrived in the airport he asked a few quick questions and gave this pastor his business card and told him he would like to contribute towards the project. A few months later when they were looking for funds to buy a vehicle, the pastor remembered this encounter and went to see the man. The pastor went armed to convince, but the man had no time to hear the whole story, but quite quickly wrote out a cheque to cover the cost of the used vehicle they wanted to purchase. If we offer what we have to God, we never know how God’s resources will add all that is needed. That is what happens in the power of the resurrection.
Peter – A Love Empowered Ministry
After the meal Jesus had with his disciples, he called Peter aside and began to speak to him. As you remember, Peter had denied Jesus three times and was probably still suffering from guilt because of that. We read the following exchange between them in John 21:15-17, “When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you truly love me more than these?” “Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.” 16 Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you truly love me?” He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.” 17 The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.”
This is a wonderful passage and we won’t explore all that is in it, but there are two things which arise out of the resurrection and have implications for our life and ministry.
Peter had blown it badly. He had denied Jesus three times. As Jesus asked him three times, “do you love me,” we can’t help but see that there is a connection between these two events and we must also recognize that in this encounter Peter was restored and commissioned to ministry. Because of the resurrection, that is what Jesus does. He can take our messes and clean them up.
The other significant implication is the relationship between the question and the assignment. Jesus asked Peter, “do you love me.” Then, following a positive response, he commissioned him to do God’s work. Last week in our C&C SS, we were talking about what it means to be a witness and we talked about how important it is that our ministry arises out of being in love with Jesus. This passage affirms that. What will happen in our witness, in our influence, in our life if we truly love Jesus? The power of the resurrection becomes active out of a love relationship with Jesus.
There is no story on earth as amazing as the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection. That God should have come to earth, lived among us, died for us and rose again from the dead is the most amazing thing that has ever happened. It is not just a story, but an event that has powerful implications for our life. Because Christ rose, we have the possibility of a relationship with God, as Mary found out. Because Christ rose, we are on a Spirit empowered mission, as Jesus told the disciples. Because Christ rose, we are invited to believe, on the basis of the evidence and of the witness of those who saw Him. Because Christ rose, His power is available to multiply all we do for Him. And because Christ rose, we can serve Him out of a deep and meaningful love.
Are you living in resurrection power? In a moment, I invite you to affirm with me in conclusion by responding to the statement Christ is Risen and thus in affirming declare yourself to be a person living in the resurrection.
Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed!
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